My father was working in Lake Tahoe helping build an apartment complex that he would co-own with a group of investors. My mother and I had been up to visit him. We’d returned to Berkeley and received an invite for dinner at my Aunt, Uncle and cousins' house in Orinda. I always enjoyed visits there. My three cousins were like sisters to me, especially the oldest, Helen, with whom I was close.
We had a nice visit including a big dinner prepared my Aunt Elsa who seemingly had magical powers when it came to meal preparation. We returned home and as it was Summer I looked forward to the coming days and hanging out with my friends. I was about eleven-years-old.
But as soon as we got home my mother started angrily yelling. I don’t remember the specifics of what she said other than, “I hate those people,” in reference to those we’d just visited. I made a particular point not to recognize or remember exactly what she said in such states as if to do so would make them them real and her mania something real.
I was torn to pieces when she started raving. I’d been enduring such horror for as long as I could remember. One never gets used to their mother raving like a lunatic. You just want it to end, you want to be left alone. You can’t bear the horrible sound of your mother’s voice in such unprovoked, unreasonable anger. It was an affront to normalcy. Ugly. Cruel. Heartbreaking.
Sometimes her ravings were directed towards a wall or a lamp but on this day, though she wasn’t “speaking” to me, I was in the direct line of fire. She even followed me into my bedroom. There was no escape. Mom was so close that covering my ears did no good, nor did playing a record on my little turntable. How I could have used noise-cancelling headphones!
It was amazing how long she could go on without succumbing to exhaustion or without her powerful voice cracking. (Odd to remember that her elocution and diction was so perfect.)
That day I had to take it, she’d invaded my space and there was no getting her out. I’d have rather taken a physical beating, it would have made more sense.
After I don’t know how long (time is an odd concept in such circumstances) she stopped and left my room. I immediately forget that anything out of the ordinary had happened. What else was I to do? Dwell on it? I never cried, I never brooded, I never grew philosophical and I never told a soul. I wanted to put it out of my mind. I wanted to live in a world where my mother was normal or dead.
No one else knew. My mother could turn it off when others were around, at least until I was about thirteen when she could contain herself no longer and the demons came out in front of my father and later others including my older brother who’d left home for college a few years before.
But for now it was our little secret. I couldn’t imagine saying to my father, “sometimes when you’re not home Mom starts raving like a loony bird, screaming and yelling and saying foul things about any and everyone.” No, that would have been impossible. At least for me. So it was my burden to carry.
I don’t know this for a fact but I’m relatively certain that later than night while I slept Mom came into my bedroom and put the covers back on me because I had a tendency to kick them off at night. Sometimes I was aware of her presence. It was weirdly comforting. The next day she would have done the chores around the house and made sure I had a nice dinner. I never went without a meal and Mom never neglected the laundry, dishes or anything else. That was for later years when she’d added heavy drinking to the mix.
The next day I would have gotten out of the house early and connected with friends. I’d have not thought about the previous day for one second. I had a remarkable ability to compartmentalize. The awful scenes propagated by my mother were in a box.
Only when I returned home would I dread my mother. As I approached the front door I would have been full of trepidation. I never knew what was on the other side. Would mom be “normal”? Would she be raving? Maybe worst of all she would be perfectly fine as I entered the house and found a snack and sat in front of the TV only to start raving and raging after I’d gotten comfortable. It was impossible to completely relax when I was growing up. I could never be sure what was next.
Thankfully she could and would turn it off when others were in the house. Then I was protected. How I hated it when my father went to work in Tahoe. I had no protection. Once he was back the nights, at least, were safe.
It was about two years after the evening described above that it all came tumbling done. Mother could contain the beast no longer. Dad and later my brother were exposed to her lunacy. She coupled this with moving out of the master bedroom and denying my dad any manner of affection. She also went on wild spending sprees, buying junk mostly. Jewelry, a chest of drawers we didn’t need, expensive knickknacks. My poor father was devastated. His world had collapsed underneath him. He could make no sense of it. He tried gamely to tell me it was menopause — something I’d never heard of. But I wasn’t buying it. I knew she was nuts and had been for as long as I could remember. Even at this point I said nothing to my father about how this was no new condition but merely something she could no longer control.
Then she started drinking. Bad got worse.
My father and I went to see the family doctor. He said that absent her being a threat to herself or anyone else we could not commit her. Well, she was no physical threat but she’d done a fair amount of damage to me in ways that still manifest today. PTSD forever.
You can imagine how I welcomed high school graduation and escaping to a college that was hours away from Mom. I spent the rest of her life avoiding my mother. Who could blame me?
I’m occasionally visited by the awful memories of my youth (as well as the many good times I had). I still don’t cry over it. I’ve talked about my mother to a string of psychiatrists and therapists and counselors over the years. The fact that some have been skeptical of my story has compounded the pain. I’ve written a lot about mom too. Who knows how much it helps? It all happened, it’s all over and it was all painful beyond words.
I don’t generally watch horror movies. I lived through one.
